 In this video, I'm going to show you how to make money on YouTube. I'll show you how to start and what to do once you've started. This will cover mistakes that I made that Mr. Beast avoided and propelled him into making the millions of dollars he makes a year. Before we begin, one of the things you need to make videos is a computer. So I think it's only appropriate that the sponsor of this video is Micro Center. Specifically today, we're going to be talking about the main gear vector. It is a 15.6 inch display gaming laptop that can be used for a lot more. Photoshop, video editing, gaming, streaming. This laptop can handle all of it and for a really good price. Main gear vector is going for 999 USD. And the reason I bring that up is because that everything in this laptop that you get for that price is unmatched anywhere. You get the i7-9750H, which is a six core 12 thread processor. The GTX 1660 Ti, which is an incredible GPU for laptops, 16 gigabytes of DDR4 RAM clocked at 2666 megahertz and a 512 NVMe M.2 SSD. In case none of that made any sense to you, let me make this really simple to understand. I got a laptop about that good a couple months ago for $2,000 from another vendor. Buy it from Micro Center instead. Please check out the link in description to see how you can get your own. Thank you so much, Microsoft, for sponsoring the video. Now let's get back to the rest of it. Concerning that laptop, that is actually one of the few laptops I recommend. The pricing that you get for everything in there is absurd. Anyways, so, beginning. What kind of videos should I make? You can make whatever you want, as long as it incorporates one of these themes. Money, reactions, challenges, popular YouTubers, pranks or drama. What I mean by this is every video can work on YouTube. You can be the guy to talk about toilet seats and go viral on YouTube. People make all kinds of weird stuff, but the successful videos almost always incorporate one of those themes. Take a look at MrBeast. Almost all of his videos incorporate the money and challenge aspect. A great example to look at would be his video, Last YouTuber to Leave the Circle, wins $100,000. It incorporates money, reaction, popular YouTubers and challenge. It makes sense that this is one of his most viewed videos. While you might be thinking, Chris, I don't have access to 100 grand or popular YouTubers. While that might be true, that's not necessarily important. The money theme doesn't always have to be a high dollar amount. It can be used the opposite way. Go ahead and look up how to survive off $20 a week and see how many videos have over a million views. And for popular YouTubers, go ahead and look up MrBeast and see how many videos that don't even have him in it actually have viewership. To be a successful creator, you don't have to have resources, but you do have to be resourceful. I don't have money for equipment. How do I start? One of the biggest misconceptions is that you need gear and equipment to make videos. While you should end up getting that stuff, in the beginning stages, you don't need it. Not having money should never be an excuse for why you don't make content. I said being a successful creator means you are resourceful and I meant that. If you have a smartphone, use that. If you don't, save up $100 and go to a pawn shop and get a cheap camera with an SD card and a battery. If you can't save up $100, you have more pressing issues than worrying about making YouTube videos. In the early stages, your video's success will be determined by the concept. Here's another great example. One of MrBeast's early successful videos is him, literally just counting to 100,000. That cost him nothing but time and probably a little bit of sanity. Now you might try the argument, hey, I do need a PC to edit videos and I don't have that cash right now. Well, in that case, this channel is literally dedicated to showing you how to build that for really cheap. But honestly, if you're just starting, there is free software for editing apps that you can download onto your smartphone. I've been posting videos, none of them take off. I've been there. I've been interested in YouTube since 2008. I've been uploading videos that did not do well for over a decade. The thing I've learned in all that time that I wish I could go back and tell myself is this, it's not about you. When you make content and you want it to do well, it is never about you. Even if you're a personality on YouTube like Jake or Logan Paul or KSI, their videos and what they do is not about them. What people know those YouTubers to be publicly is what it's about. It's about the content that they provide. If they stop providing content, the consumers will stop providing the views. Does that make sense? If it doesn't leave a comment so I can describe it a little bit better. I used to upload videos of myself blipsyncing and playing video games and none of them ever took off. It wasn't until I uploaded a video of myself building a gaming PC for cheap that I actually got some traction. That's because the content was something that people were actually interested in. Gaming PCs are a hot topic. A lot of people want them and people are always interested in saving money. So naturally it did better than anything I had ever uploaded before. Okay, I've done all of this and I still can't grow. So I said earlier that you can be the toilet seat guy and still go viral. While that may be true, there are definitely some benefits and downfalls to being super niche. When you make content within a very specific field, that means a lot of people are not going to be looking for you. One sad fact about content creation is the bigger the audience you try to appeal to, the bigger the chances that someone is going to stumble across your video. The catch is there are a lot of other creators in that space already that are doing better than you, that are more established than you, that are gonna get those views first. So if you don't make better content than them or make content that kind of varies, that doesn't already exist in that field, there really is no reason to watch you. That said, I still encourage you to make videos in a saturated place. Why? Autoplay. You know how when a video ends, YouTube automatically queues up another video to play if you don't tell it to stop? This is YouTube's way of trying to find another video that you are most likely to watch. Autoplay can get your video to be seen after a viewer watches a video that they came to see first. And if there are already a lot of eyes looking at challenge-oriented Mr. Beast-type videos, maybe you should not be the toilet seat guy and come up with a challenge that Mr. Beast hasn't done yet. Middle. Okay, so let's assume you're gaining traction. What you're doing is working. You're seeing your sub count go up and you're getting consistent viewership on your videos. There are a few things now that you need to start paying attention to. Thumbnails and titles. Truthfully, this is something that you should have already been working on or aware of, but I couldn't fit it in earlier, so here we are now. Take a look at Mr. Beast's thumbnails. They're very clickable, right? They have a lot of effort put into them. That's because he understands that your thumbnail and title are a two-second window to convince someone to give you a chance. If you can't even get someone through the door, good luck getting them to buy anything that you're selling. Now, what makes a thumbnail good? Well, the first thing is that they are very easy to understand. They're also very easy to look at, not confusing or overwhelming. Keep in mind, a lot of viewers are actually watching YouTube on mobile. I know there are a lot of creators that don't upload their video privately and then check out what the thumbnail looks like on their phone. You should be doing that and getting a second opinion from your friends or family, asking them if they would click on that video. Second is the title. Titles and thumbnails combined should give your viewer an idea of what's to come in the video. They should compliment each other in a way that gets the viewer excited about what's going to be shown to them. For example, if I put in the title $400 Budget Build PC and then in the thumbnail, all you see is a computer with $400 written underneath it, you know exactly what's gonna come. It's not too exciting because it's already been laid out for you to understand. If instead it's titled, I can't believe this computer was this cheap with question marks instead of the dollar amount, then maybe you can generate some more clicks because viewers will be more interested to see what it actually cost. Understand the growth stage. This is without a doubt the most valuable information I can give to a creator that is already creating. If you are doing your job right, you are bringing in more viewership and more money. Don't stop. What I mean by don't stop is this. Look at MrBeats YouTube channel. You'll notice a lot of money is spent on his videos. Well, it wasn't always that way. In the beginning, his videos were low budget, but as he got more viewers, the concepts and ideas of his videos became more daring. Why? When I made a few thousand dollars, I just spent a few thousand dollars. When I made $10,000, I just spent 10. So it's like, as I made more money, I was just like, all right, well now I wanna spend it on videos somehow. This might sound like a no brainer, but it isn't. I fell into this trap and I wish I didn't. What MrBeats does is what most entrepreneurs are afraid to do. Whatever they make, they spend. I'll be honest, the first viral video I made after it was done trending earned me about $10,000. I took that money, I put it away, and I went back to making my regularly scheduled content. That was the biggest mistake I ever made. Since then, my channel has never grown at the same rate and rightfully so. I didn't take that money and reinvest it into future videos. 10 grand? I just made that money. There's no way I'm gonna spend it. I've never even seen that much money in my entire life. My point is, if you want to make MrBeast money, you have to make MrBeast moves. As a result of him pressing forward, he scaled up big time and probably makes around half a million dollars each month off of YouTube. What I'm saying is if you can't keep up with the momentum, the momentum will not keep with you. Make your videos 10 minutes or longer. Just in case you don't know this, you kinda need to make your videos 10 minutes or longer. A partnered YouTuber gets to put ads on their videos when they are 10 minutes or longer. And I'm pretty sure that YouTube is more likely to promote videos of that length. YouTube makes more money the longer people are on the platform and honestly, so do you. Don't fill your video with crap to try and hit the 10 minutes but if you can, try to get there. Avoid no-no words and bad topics. I learned this the hard way so you don't have to. Don't make content with controversial figures, questionable topics or excessive cursing. YouTube has a way of punishing your CPM, cost per mil. That's the amount of money you make per 1,000 views. And throttling performance of a video if it doesn't agree with the views of companies that are paying for the ads that show up on YouTube. A while ago, I made a video of PewDiePie themed gaming PCs. I thought this video would take off because PewDiePie was incredibly popular at the time and honestly, these were the nicest computers I had ever built. They were gorgeous. On top of that, I was giving all of them away. This sounds like it would do pretty well, right? Well, the day I uploaded it, my CPM dropped by 40% and the video didn't get a lot of views. I look back and realized that PewDiePie was a controversial figure. The media was constantly talking negatively about him and despite him being a popular YouTuber, the video did not do well. Companies just didn't want their ads associated with PewDiePie at the time and YouTube recognized that. I know controversy and drama can oftentimes be thought of good ways to go, but trust me, it has its drawbacks and can cause permanent damage to your channel. Surprise, there is no end game. On YouTube, it is a continuous process with no end. When you decide it's over, you just retire. At some point, your content creation journey will come to an end, but if that day never comes, just stay in the middle process. Keep it up, keep innovating and keep trying to be better than you were yesterday. Find ways to stay relevant and stay strong. When you do finally get to have YouTube as the dream job you always imagined, it will take a mental toll on you, but just remember, numbers don't define you. Only your hard work and determination does. Never forget that. If you guys like what you saw here in this video, let me know in the comments. There is a lot more that people don't know about when it comes to turning YouTube into a business. I'd be more than happy to share. It is dangerous information, I suppose, but truthfully, I don't think there are a lot of people out there who are willing to work hard enough to make this work. This job is fun, but it's also really hard. If you wanna talk more about this or other topics, feel free to follow my Twitch streams. Thanks again to Micro Center for sponsoring this video. If you do wanna save some money and get an amazing laptop to start creating content, stream, or game, please check out the link in the description. I'm serious when I say that is an amazing deal. Anyways, I hope you guys found this video creative, entertaining, or informative in any way, shape, or form. And as always, have a great day. I'm gonna be mercy.